Real People. True Stories.

CTCA: A Better Normal

Client: Cancer Treatment Centers of America

Few events are more life-changing than a battle with cancer. These profiles of people affected by the disease demonstrate how the team at Cancer Treatment Centers of America is able to help cancer patients continue rich, full lives during and after treatment.

It was such a pleasure to get to know Jennifer and her family. She is truly superhuman.

Smithsonian: Fred Armisen and Bill Hader

Client: Smithsonian

Fred Armisen and Bill Hader are not only two of the funniest people you could ever meet; they are also huge film nerds. So it's no wonder their brilliant documentary parody series, "Documentary Now!' earned them an American Ingenuity Award from the Smithsonian.

Sitting down with them to geek out on Gray Gardens, Nanook of the North and other docs worth satirizing was so much fun it hurt.

Stelara: Dawn

Client: Johnson & Johnson

Nothing can destroy our lives more than health problems: it changes how we feel, the way we look at ourselves and our relationships with loved ones. And it can be even more devastating when others can actually see the illness.

As part of a campaign for the psoriasis drug, Stelara, we sat down with women around the country who had struggled with this debilitating condition, and what it meant to find treatment that helped them regain their lives and themselves.

Smithsonian: The Inventor

Client: Smithsonian

At the ripe old age of 14, Lilianna Zyszkowski has done more than most of us will in our whole lives. A born problem-solver, she has dedicated herself to helping others through her inventions.

On the surface, her devices tap into existing technology to make life more productive and easier. Look a little deeper, and they just may offer a glimpse into what the future will look like.

Lockheed Martin: Behind the Drones

Client: The Washington Post Brand Studio

This project highlights the people behind Lockheed Martin’s autonomous vehicles, and their innovative efforts to transition from military to civilian use.

CTCA: A Normal Life

Client: Cancer Treatment Centers of America

Few events are more life-changing than a battle with cancer. These profiles of people affected by the disease demonstrate how the team at Cancer Treatment Centers of America is able to help cancer patients continue rich, full lives during and after treatment.

Kelsey’s story is so incredibly moving, and she is wise far beyond her 19 years.

Smithsonian: The Bionic Man

Client: Smithsonian

Hugh Herr has lived a fascinating life. He started out as a mountain climbing prodigy from a Mennonite family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but when a horrific case of frostbite robbed him of his legs, he devoted his life to developing better, smarter prosthetics.

His incredible invention, the Biom, is the first true bionic prosthetic, and has helped rebuild the bodies of everyone from wounded war heroes to a ballroom dancer who lost a leg in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Smithsonian: The Epic Search for a Tiny Planet

Client: Smithsonian

If there’s a word to describe Alan Stern, it would be tenacity. He has spent his entire professional life in pursuit of our most illusive planet, Pluto (and don’t even dream of referring to it as a dwarf planet to Alan).

His decades-long mission to the farthest planet completes our look at the solar system, and is one of the biggest stories to come from outer space in our lifetime.

CTCA: The Team

Client: Cancer Treatment Centers of America

Few events are more life-changing than a battle with cancer. These profiles of people affected by the disease demonstrate how the team at Cancer Treatment Centers of America is able to help cancer patients continue rich, full lives during and after treatment.

Ken is one of those extraordinary human beings who never stops thinking of others, even in the midst of his own challenges.

People: Mos Def: It Ain't My Fault

Client: PBS/People Magazine

When the BP oil spill threatened to destroy the gulf coast, a group of renowned musicians gathered in New Orleans for a benefit concert. It’s unofficial anthem was “It Ain’t My Fault” by Mos Def; written and recorded in a single (very long) night with help from Lenny Kravitz, Trombone Shorty and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

The results reflect the heartfelt emotion, exasperation and anger of the situation without abandoning the inimitably funky New Orleans spirit that has helped this great American city survive everything that’s been thrown it’s way.

Fortune: Steve Jobs, Failure?

Client: Fortune Magazine

Photojournalist Doug Menuez was embedded in Silicon Valley in the tech center’s infancy in the 1980s. Several decades later, the scenes he captured give a singularly unique perspective into the mind of one of the greatest minds of the technological age, Steve Jobs.

In a piece for Fortune Magazine, Menuez tells the story of Jobs’ most brilliant failure, Next Computer.

Smithsonian: Can Art Save Our Inner Cities?

Client: Smithsonian

How does a little-known potter become one of America’s most forward-looking social revolutionaries?

What began for Theaster Gates as an art project soon took on a life of its own as a wholly unique way to address social and cultural ills on Chicago’s South Side and beyond.

Intel: Live Smarter

Client: Intel

Mark Verstegen has trained some of the biggest names in professional sports. Instead of using simple brute strength, he has developed technology that enables training to be smarter and more efficient.

In this spot for Intel, Mark explains his methods.

Microsoft: Brown Bag Revolution

Client: Microsoft

Revolution Foods started with a simple mission: to provide healthy food and nutrition education to the kids who need it the most. They’ve devised a way to provide fresh, nourishing school meals in some of the country’s worst food deserts.

Even more incredibly, they do it for the same cost as the far-less-nutritious existing school lunches, while at the same time building a profitable company.

They are a great example of social responsibility and business working hand-in-hand, and helping tell their story was truly inspiring.

Avon: Sarah Jane's Story

Client: Avon

Another in our series on women who work for Avon around the globe, here Sarah Jane uses her own personal health scare to illustrate the company's dedication to women's health issues wellness.

Intel: Seeing Stars

Client: Intel

As part of an ad campaign for Intel, we were given the assignment to interview Morris Jarvis: a man building a spacecraft out of used airplane parts in the middle of nowhere, Arizona.

On the way, we began to wonder aloud if he was for real, or just another crackpot fried by the desert sun. By the end of that dusty, 120° day he had convinced us all that he might just be onto something.

This one’s for all the DIYers out there.

Smithsonian: Prison U

Client: Smithsonian

The Bard Prison Initiative is a revolutionary way of looking at our penal system. The brainchild of Bard College graduate Max Kenner, it provides a 4-year Liberal Arts education to people who society has given up on; maximum-security prisoners. And the results have been extraordinary.

Avon: Vicky's Story

Client: Avon

This was one of those gigs that is so unusual it can’t help but be fascinating: Fly around the world interviewing women that sell Avon door-to-door in different countries. Their stories turned out to be incredibly interesting, heart wrenching and inspiring.

Before I left for England, a friend’s daughter had given me a Flat Stanley – a paper doll that you pass around from person to person, keeping track of it’s progress by sending postcards back to their 3rd grade class. Vicky’s daughter saw it sticking out of the camera bag and asked if she could play with it, so there it is at 1:23 in the video.

Fortune: Eye on the Revolution

Client: Fortune Magazine

Doug Menuez spent 15 years as a photographer in Silicon Valley, documenting the companies and innovators that would change our world forever. He had unlimited access at Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and other tech giants.

Here, in a story for Fortune Magazine, he describes his unparalleled role as eyewitness to the greatest business story of our age.

Time: Gulf Aid, Allen

Client: PBS/Time Inc.

As part of a benefit concert for the gulf during the BP oil spill, we interviewed some of the people most affected by the disaster.

Allen is a subsistence fisherman deep in the bayou. There are no roads that will take you to his home; you can only go by boat. Alligators live underneath his house. He is tough as nails, which made his pain that much more moving.

Smithsonian: Lin-Manuel Miranda

Client: Smithsonian

You’d have to be living under a rock not to have seen some of the massive publicity surrounding Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose, “Hamilton” has reinvented musical theater and single-handedly reinvigorated Broadway.

As part of an assignment for Smithsonian, we were lucky enough to have the very first on-camera interview with him about the extraordinary play, even edging out 60 Minutes.

Smithsonian: Your Computer Knows How You Feel

Client: Smithsonian

It’s rare to meet someone who will transform history. Who will change not only your life, but the lives of everyone you know. Rana el Kaliouby is that person.

Her work bringing emotion recognition technology to our digital devices would be great science fiction, except it is real.

In time, this technology may prove to be as revolutionary as the invention of the personal computer, smart phone, or social media.

Inside Jobs: Sweet Dreams

Client: Inside Jobs

Inside Jobs is a digital service that helps people find the jobs that are best suited to them. Here two best friends describe leaving their safe corporate jobs to follow their dream of opening a bakery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

By the way, we ate almost every cupcake that you see in this video, and they were good.

Intel: Know Thy Farmer

Client: Intel

Dan and Dave Barber are icons of the farm-to-table food movement. Their motto is, “Know Thy Farmer,” although in their case, it’s not that difficult; it's only about 50 feet between the farm and their tables.

In a campaign for Intel, they explain the joy of forging a connection between farmer and chef.

Microsoft: Fresh Eyes

Client: Microsoft

Technology is the great equalizer: the more accessible it becomes, the more even the playing field.

At The Bronx New School, an innovative filmmaking program enables the young students to show what’s happening in their world, giving them the power to teach adults their concerns. And it all started with one inspiring teacher.

Avon: Rebekah's Story

Client: Avon

Rebekah Testar has become a phenomenon in England, known as the £ 1,000,000 Avon Lady. Here she tells how the company empowered her to build her own business.

Microsoft: Helping Hands

Client: Microsoft

We’ve all had teachers who changed the way we thought about the world and our place in it.

Working at an underfunded school outside Washington DC, Shana Sterkin used her own money to start a program to teach community responsibility to her students.

She is truly an example of how an ordinary person can affect the lives of those around them forever.

Inside Jobs: The Score

Client: Inside Jobs

Very few people understand how important music is to a movie or TV show. Done right, it helps mold all the different elements into an inseparable whole. But often the composers who make this vital contribution remain all-but-unseen to the general public.

This profile of film composer Chris Hajian brings an under-appreciated role to the forefront.

Microsoft: Story Pirates

Client: Microsoft

What do you get when you cross a troupe of brilliant improv actors with elementary school kids? The Story Pirates, of course!

From its origins as a student project at Northwestern University, Story Pirates has used unconventional methods to help countless children learn to express themselves through creative writing.

An interesting aside: when we filmed this spot for Microsoft they were sharing a cramped office with a struggling actor and musician named Lin-Manuel Miranda, who just a few years later would go on to write and star in the Broadway phenomenon, “Hamilton.”

Principal Financial Group: Looking Up

Client: Principal Financial Group

This was a case of using life’s lemons to make lemonade.

As part of a campaign for Principal Financial Group, we flew around with personal finance guru Jean Chatzky talking to ordinary families about their retirement plans.

The day we were set to shoot the Harris family, a freak Dallas snowstorm and the resulting power outage left us scrambling for generators to light their home. It was stressful to say the least. But it paid off in spades with gorgeous footage of these wonderful people and their adorable granddaughter enjoying that most precious of rarities, the Texas snowman.

Principal Financial Group: Williams

Client: Principal Financial Group

It's not often you get to do commercial work that helps people as much as this series for Principal Financial Group.

The Williams family was finding it incredibly difficult to get ahead, despite working hard at stable careers.

When they sat down with Personal Financial expert Jean Chatzky, she was able to teach them about tax breaks and incentives that would save them tens of thousands of dollars: a great, personal example of what a good financial advisor can do.

Inside Jobs: Getting Medieval

Client: Inside Jobs

Too often, people with unusual lives or interests are treated as eccentric oddballs. As part of a series for the job-finding web service Inside Jobs, we met up with people with atypical careers to find out about their lives.

Here, the Head Knight at a New Jersey Medieval Times prompts the question, “What’s so funny about taking your job seriously?”

Principal Financial Group: America Rebuilds

Client: Principal Financial Group

Sometimes the best stories are right in front of your face.

Despite a lengthy and expensive casting process to find families to profile in this series for Principal Financial Group, we ended up going with Keith and Marjan Beebe, who we knew because she sold her outrageously delicious pies from a folding table at our local farmer’s market.

Smithsonian: The Persistence of Memory

Client: Smithsonian

MIT’s Steve Ramirez and Xu Liu grew up obsessed with sci-fi movies. Their game-changing research implanting false memories into the brains of mice brought fantasy to life, and earned them a Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award.

In case you missed it: These guysimplant false memories into the brains of mice.

Smithsonian: Rosanne Cash

Client: Smithsonian

The best thing about our interview with Rosanne Cash happened off-camera.

As she was tuning her guitar, I asked her where she’d learned to play. She replied, “My dad asked Carl Perkins to teach me when I was a kid.”

In all the people we’ve interviewed, that could be the coolest sentence ever uttered.

Smithsonian: Oculus Rift

Client: Smithsonian

Palmer Luckey taught himself how to build virtual reality equipment by downloading 15 year-old manuals off the internet in his parents garage. In just a few years, he had revived the seemingly dead technology and sold his company to Mark Zuckerberg for billions of dollars.

When asked what his parents thought of his success, he said, “You know those bumper stickers that say, ‘My kid’s an honor student at…’? My parents pretty much won that game.”

Smithsonian: Girl Power

Client: Smithsonian

Kimberly Bryant likes to quote a startling fact: Each year more guys named Dave graduate with a degree in computer science than all the women who earn the same degree put together.

So she did something about it.

Smithsonian: After the Flood

Client: Smithsonian

Found-footage filmmaker Bill Morrison’s work blurs the lines between art, music, filmmaking and history.

Here he speaks of his film “The Great Flood” which uses decaying archival newsreels to shine a light on a crucial but almost forgotten period in American history.

Smithsonian: Parks in the Sky

Client: Smithsonian

Janet Echelman uses fishing nets, technology and the urban landscape to create public art on an absolutely massive scale.

Smithsonian: The Ice Cube

Client: Smithsonian

Talk about thinking outside the box; Frances Halzen transformed a kilometer-wide block of ice at the South Pole into the lens of the world’s largest telescope. Now his work is revealing the origins of the Universe.

Smithsonian: An Art Gallery Hits the Road

Client: Smithsonian

This one was a nail-biter.

When Shamim Momin got the news she and her co-curator Zoe Crosher were being honored by the Smithsonian, she was less than a week away from giving birth. We rushed to LA to get the interview done in time, and she ended up having the baby only two days after.

Smithsonian: Comics in the Classroom

Client: Smithsonian

Francoise Mouly takes comics seriously. She’s the Art Editor for The New Yorker, the founder of Raw Magazine, and is married to Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman.

So perhaps it’s not surprising that she saw the educational potential in comic books when few others did.

Microsoft: Recycle Bank

Client: Intel

As individuals everywhere strive to live greener lives, Ron Gonen came up with Recycle Bank, an innovative company that gives financial incentives for increasing good practices, and shows that business and sustainability can go hand-in-hand.

Stelara: Justine

Client: Johnson & Johnson

Justine is a strong, driven person; not one to sit around feeling sorry for herself. So when she began struggling with psoriasis, she took action.

Here she describes her attitude on life, and how the groundbreaking treatment Stelara helped her regain control of her life.

Smithsonian: Remember Me

Client: Smithsonian

Drs. Rudy Tanzi and Doo Yeon Kim have developed a game-changing method of Alzheimer’s research that may well cure the disease in the next few years.

In a shining example of truth being stranger than fiction Dr. Tanzi is also an accomplished pianist who plays in a band with Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, and wrote and performed the music we used for this profile.

MGH: The Organ Builder

Client: Massachusetts General Hospital

Too often the inclination is to see science as cold and methodical, discounting the intense creativity that goes into cutting-edge innovations.

Dr. Jay Vacanti has one of the most ingenious minds in medical science. A passing glimpse of a building covered in scaffolding inspired his groundbreaking work in building living human organs.

(Plus, he had a cold on the day we interviewed him, which gives his voice an extra bit of drama and gravitas.)

MGH: Exposing Cancer's Weakness

Client: Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr. Dan Haber’s use of genetics to treat cancer is the future of medicine, and one of the reasons that Massachusetts General Hospital is the #1 rated hospital in the country.